Where Did Level-Up Come From?

In the spring of 2019, the vice-principal of Herriman High school, Julie Scherzinger, happened to be listening to a parenting podcast named Light The Fight, which is hosted by David Kozlowski, licensed marriage and family therapist. In this episode, David explained how he sees the current youth mental health decline, especially the growing suicide epidemic, as not being a mental health issue. Instead, he sees it as a social health issue with serious mental health side effects. This made a lot of sense to Julie, but the solution David offered was even more intriguing to her. He stated that he believed if our country were to make real, impactful changes to help our youth, it would have to start in school classrooms. He went on to describe a new type of curriculum that would create a solution to the problem instead of attempting to treat the symptoms of the problem.

Julie believed that this is what was missing from the current social & emotional learning, mental health, & behavioral health curriculums currently being offered. Julie reached out to David about the possibility of Herriman High School being the pilot program for this new school approach to helping youth improve their mental health. After several months of developing & formulating the curriculum to be taught at Herriman High School, the curriculum was launched in august 2020, to be taught to all incoming sophomores at the school.